In a new and bitter twist in the ongoing debate about the plebiscite we’re having because politicians lack the courage to do the job they were elected to do and just change the damn marriage laws, Lyle Shelton, managing director of the right-wing fundamentalist Australian Christian Lobby, has now called for anti discrimination laws forbidding hate speech against LGBTQI people to be relaxed, so that his tribe can argue the “no” side in the same-sex marriage plebiscite without fear of legal action being taken against them.
It’s difficult to know where to start deconstructing the bigotry of this: a Christian lobby group is demanding the right to use, with impunity, what the law defines as hate speech to argue its case against same-sex marriage.
If any group needs access to hate speech in order to argue its case about anything, it obviously has no case. The very request for impunity from the law is all the evidence needed to demonstrate that its case is already illegal, before any argument is embarked upon. However, Shelton argues that anti-discrimination laws have “such a low threshold,” anything the no side argues will make them vulnerable to the constant threat of legal action.
Shelton intends to use what he describes as “the millennia-old argument” that marriage should only be between a man and a woman. Millennia-old arguments are not the best place to start when debating a point of view: they can be refuted in seconds, and besides, before proceeding with such an argument the proponent must demonstrate why longevity is an argument for anything.
I’m not a fan of marriage, however, it is currently a powerful institution and every man and woman who wants to live in that institution has the right to do so, regardless of sexual orientation. Shelton, et al, are arguing for their religious ideology. They have now admitted that they can’t make that argument without employing bullying, and discrimination. This, to me, says their religious ideology is tyrannical, as is their determination to inflict their views on those of us who do not wish to be subjected to them.
I don’t think Shelton has a hope of having anti-discrimination laws relaxed to enable him to use whatever speech he likes to argue against marriage equality. However, the upside of this unforeseen aspect of the debate about how we should run the plebiscite debate before we actually get to debating the plebiscite, let alone voting on the most unnecessary plebiscite EVAH, is that it demonstrates as nothing else can, the bigotry and tyranny of the no faction.
It also demonstrates the level of stupidity with which we are dealing, and it isn’t all on the ACL side.
No Place For Sheep 
“It also demonstrates the level of stupidity with which we are dealing, and it isn’t all on the ACL side.”
The remainder of the stupidity being on which side?
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The damn government for not just changing the law without plebiscite
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Yes, that’s what I thought you meant, although I wouldn’t consider them a “side”.
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ACL is mainly the assembly of god USA Cult known as many things in Australian such as Hillsoing, Calvary and other names but all essential Family First religious fanatics. I don’t like fanaticism of any kind, especially when I believe that religion=delusion.
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I agree that religion=delusion. I just don’t get it, tbh.
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I believe that some people just can’t face the concept of dying, and religion is a comfort to them to think that there is something beyond the grave, but that does not make sense to me. Mind you I have just received an education on another thread on why homosexual parent should be allowed to have children so who knows I may someday find I’m in agreement with the god bothers but I very much doubt it.
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“If any group needs access to hate speech in order to argue its case about anything, it obviously has no case. ”
Says it all – yet we are heading towards another long and fruitless gabfest, where black is white and white is black, and give up now, if you are the slightest bit grey.
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$160 million I think I heard
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I thought Christians were only given to discussing matters sexual behind closed doors.
Or is that, closing doors and giving it to sexual behinds?
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Shelton has since said that if ss couples marry no one will be able to tell he is straight.
I just got up off the floor from laughing
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I have yet to see a religion or a cult that does not practice hypocrisy so I will wait with baited breath to her the outcome of this matter.
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They’ll use any and every argument, up to and including the increased threat of buggery on budgerigars.
Perhaps Shelton should wear a tee shirt “I am straight” on the front and “If you can read this you are too close to my arse” on the back. “))
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hehehehehehehehe…
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“What’s been puzzling you,
is the nature of my game”.
Amazing how often Evil most often employs the Trojan Horse of Virtue.
Children, please read Handmaid’s Tale if you want a reasonable concept of where this is heading, which is to say, the sixteenth century.
Hate speech is a refusal of communication and reason. It bespeaks a dysfunctional, reactive and ultimately destructive mentality. Abuse is no substitute for a reasoned conversation employing the working of the “Leetle GreyCells”.
Abuse means you have lost the argument. It is a form of censorship in a funny way, a nd a weapon of those who lack the courage of their convictions and fail to discern the meaning of the gap between need and dislocated subjective phobic whim as to outcomes.
Let them take it back to their Tea Party sponsors in the USA.
………………………………………………………………………………………
It’s funny how evangelical Xtians often miss the forest for the trees.
The story about not casting the first stone is foundational and pretty obvious as to meaning, isn’t it?
Where is “live and let live”?
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One of the most manipulative people I ever met was on the surface soooooooo nice and good and honourable. I don’t think ACL are in that league, though. They’re too obvious
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Because no one drops the F Bombs like Jesus. Even Samuel L Jackson, so slouch in the F Bomb stakes, was blown away on the vitriol Jesus used in his ministry
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I’m not expert enough on Jesus to comment, but I do like some of the stories about him, and he does sound capable of violence.
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The policies represent the mentality. Here is an example of the mentality crossing over to social and economic policy: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/michaelia-cash-comments-suggests-light-still-burns-inside-turnbull-government-for-gst-rise-20160215-gmv0tz.html
It is a very psychotic thing, hard-right reasoning, absolutely dislocated from real world concerns.
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Rationality become insanity.
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Yeah, I’m thinking when Lyle says “the millennia-old argument” he is not thinking of historical fact, but biblical bullshit. As historically, way before Lyle’s God Squad religion had any sort of structure Marriage was just a contract for ownership of Land, Goods, to solidify ‘family’ links etc…
Once Lyle’s mates got their act together we can blame the lazy bloody British kings who could not be bothered teaching the population to read & write, hence they outsourced the recording of Births, Deaths, Marriages, Land tax etc onto the Church, for which of course they got a generous cut. For some reason the Church is still scamming off the taxpayer yet no longer performing all these services on behalf of the King any more.
Let’s face it.
The Church no longer records all Births, the state does, though they still have Baptisms and those kids have not burned up in flames?
The Church no longer records all Deaths, yet it does not stop them having all sorts of different Funerals?
I’m thinking the religious types like the ACL are only holding onto Marriage as something that is sacred to them only and not to EVERYONE as what bullies always do when faced with irrelevance, they fight even harder to try to be relevant 😦
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti-religion, some of my family is very religious, having said that, they would give you their last 5 cents and have no issues with giving ‘equality’ to all. You know, REAL Christians, not bigots like Lyle & his mates hiding behind their nasty version of religion.
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All very true, as stated in your first three paragraphs. Marriage is a civil contract, which Churches like to “consecrate” and “solemnise”.
You may not be anti-religion but I am, and I ponder how much better the world would be without religion.
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Can’t stop people pondering on these things. Second nature for members of a species like ours at our current evolutionary stage.
Who’s to say what the final truth is.
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I too have pondered this matter. For example:
Democritus was born in Abdera, Greece in 460BC. He lived to be 90 years old, dying in the year 370BC. He studied natural philosophy in Thrace, Athens, and Abdera, Greece. He enjoyed studying geometry as well. Democritus traveled to many places some of which including India, Egypt, and Babylon. Democritus was never married.
His mentor, Leucippus, originally came up with the atomic theory, but it was then adopted by Democritus. The atomic theory stated that “The universe is composed of two elements: the atoms and the void in which they exist and move.” According to Democritus atoms were minuscule quantities of matter. Democritus hypothesized that atoms cannot be destroyed, differ in size, shape and temperature, are always moving, and are invisible. He believed that there are an infinite number of atoms. This hypothesis was created in 465BC.
https://the-history-of-the-atom.wikispaces.com/Democritus
I suspect that the church as it was, had something to do with the killing off of curiosity and inquiry, instead preferring the idea that a benevolent sky daddy just makes things happen; move along, nothing to see here.
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Yep. You NAIL it. So much of the bedrock for what has been succesful over human history relates to that era from about 6 or 7 hundred BC on, a convergence era where the major civilisations had recovered from the Bronze Age collapse and began serious trade including involving ideas and technology, literacy, maths and science.
Protagoras was another example, the first thinker to understand that the sun was a material body heating the earth. He surmised that the sun must actually be a huge fiery rock the size of Sparta, which people could laugh at if they overlooked the feat of imagination and thinking involved and the fact that these people were actually involved in complex group debates as to these things re “reality”, unenecumbered by too close a link to religion for perhaps the first time in our short recorded history.
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Giant stuff up. It, of course, was Anaxagoras who theorised on the sun as a physical entity at a distance from the earth.
Protagoras was an intellectual sparring partner for Socrates and Plato; one of the so called Sophists. From there, it gets more interesting and complex although it has its origins in the great earlier conversation involving Parmenides, also involved in atomic theory and the first po-mo philosopher, Heraclitus, who emphasised flux as opposed to solidity.
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I don’t know a bloody thing about ancient Greece, but I do know right from wrong, and what the tory government is doing to these children is wrong, dead wrong.
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Socrates had an interesting comment on this, suggesting that people find it harder to do wrong than right.
It would explain why the likes of Morrison and many others always look so uptight.
Socrates beleived there was an inner voice, if you like, that would inform people on how to act in a situation and that going against the grain of commonsense and conscience would bring more grief, not less..
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I simply do not believe any of those fraudulent swine listen to their inner voice. It probably gave up trying to be heard decades ago.
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Well, yes. Like I said, you see the guilt furrows building on their faces as time passes, like a portrait of Dorian Grey. Morrison is a good example.
Put another way,
“What a tangled web we weave,
when first we practice to deceive”.
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I’m hard pressed to believe them even capable of guilt.
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I do think it comes naturally to ‘Hillsong’ Morrison to do the wrong think without justification.
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Jennifer they don’t feel guilty because they believe that God is actually controlling them, they consider themselves tools of God. I just consider them, tools.
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LOL, tools of god. Mwahahahahahahahaha
Tools far more appropriate, Townsville.
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